Campaign Signs in Ottawa West – Nepean

It’s spring, flowers are blooming, the grass is green and… nope actually. Sorry, I was dreaming. It’s still cold and the only thing that seems to be growing these days is campaign signs. These big pieces of cardboard, commonly known as “lawn signs,” popped up magically the night after the federal elections were announced and are now spreading across the country. In fact, some signs were even up before the election was called!

You can’t miss them: they are at every busy intersection. Sooner or later, candidates’ supporters will canvass your riding and try to convince you to put one of their signs on your lawn as well. They help build name recognition and are a way to show your support and enthusiasm for a particular party or candidate.

Campaigns are full of lawn sign stories: an Unwelcome Tory sign irks Ottawa woman, a Conservative candidate is told to remove his sign from a federal building, Liberal candidate suffers $2,000 loss in vandalized campaign signs, and recycled campaign signs raise ire in Oak Ridges-Markham. Indeed, campaign signs are regulated. For instance, Election Canada states that “it is an offence to take down, remove, cover up, mutilate, deface or alter any printed advertisement, placard, poster or banner having reference to the election of a candidate without authority.”

Most surprising for me, the French immigrant, is the fact that lawn signs let everyone know who you support politically. While this is a big taboo in France it doesn’t seem to bother Canadians, who are usually quite private. But apparently, political affiliations aren’t a private topic here.

For instance, the four candidates in my riding (Ottawa West – Nepean) are John Baird (Conservative), Anita Vandenbeld (Liberal), Marlene Rivier (NDP) and Mark Mackenzie (Green). They all started to distribute their campaign signs a couple of weeks ago—John Baird himself even showed up at my door last Saturday! It’s like a chess game on the side of the road: candidate A puts one sign, candidate B adds a bigger one, candidate C puts his own sign in front of the two previous ones and they start all over again a few metres further. Some houses started to display signs on their front lawn as well: I have neighbours supporting the NDP, the Conservative and the Green Party.

I can’t imagine this kind of campaigning working well in France. First, while Canada usually has four or five parties for any given election, France has typically way more. For instance, there were 12 parties running for the 2007 presidential election, and 16 parties for the 2002 presidential election. Imagine the mess if each party were to put signs on the side of the road!

Second and most importantly, the French take politics very seriously. Discovering one morning that the upstairs neighbours support Le Pen (extreme-right borderline neo-Nazi party) and the one downstairs praise the Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire would end in a bloodbath. Seriously. It would be like a Toronto Maple Leafs fan putting up a sign for his team downtown Montreal or a New York Yankees fan cheering among a crowd of Boston Red Sox fans.

I guess lawn signs are a good way for candidates to raise money and for supporters to contribute. They also help voters get to know the names of the candidates in a riding. Indeed, when the elections were announced, I tried to find out who would be running in my riding and I realized that no website maintains a comprehensive list of all the candidates per riding. You have to go to each party’s website to find out. A quick walk in the neighbourhood will let you know who is running—simply look at the campaign signs!

But aren’t ballots supposed to be secret? I still won’t display my political choice on my lawn. Still too French for that. Besides, as the old saying goes, “lawn signs don’t vote.” So, can we focus on putting forward ideas for Canada’s future instead of fighting over big pieces of cardboard?

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16 Comments

  1. Max Coutinho April 13, 2011 at 11:43 am

    Hey Zhu,

    Entertaining post, no doubt!

    Say what? No spring there yet? My God, we have summer already (average temps: 26ºC)…perhaps winter will come to Canada later as well, who knows?

    Lawn signs are a crazy thing; not to mention that they go against aesthetics (but that is the beauty of cultural differences).

    We are quite open about our partisanship, here in Portugal – we always know who is lefty and who is a right-winger (by the way they talk, they dress and by the way they defend their party’s programme with so much passion LOL).

    Loved the post and good luck next month :D!

    Cheers

    Reply
    1. Zhu April 13, 2011 at 8:43 pm

      Spring is coming slowly… it was actually hot a couple of days ago, April is still hit-and-miss here, it gets warmer after that and then crazy hot in the summer. It’s Canada!

      In France you do know instinctively who is voting for whom, but you usually don’t say it until you are very close.

      Reply
  2. expatraveler April 13, 2011 at 6:45 pm

    There is one very good upsides about living in a warmer climate of Canada, we do have green grass (yes I should prove it).. And since we don’t have tv, we don’t have to listen to campaign ads, yeah! But kidding aside, I cannot wait until the election is over. Way too much goes into it all and I think most of us just can’t bare it!

    Reply
    1. Zhu April 13, 2011 at 8:43 pm

      I wasn’t ready for elections either… and I think these ones will bring another status quo.

      Grass is green here too. Well, kind of… the snow just melted!

      Reply
  3. barbara April 14, 2011 at 2:08 am

    Salut Zhu,

    Each time that I return back to North America and see these campaign signs I think to myself ” you aren’t in France anymore!”.

    I remember our interest in seeing the signs for the 2008 Presidential campaign and meeting the election volunteers. It was an interesting period to be traveling in.

    Right; I could hardly imagine that happening in France and if it did, neighbors would most likely not be “neighborly” at all… Some of them would hate each other even more!

    Reply
    1. Zhu April 14, 2011 at 11:57 am

      Oh, I can easily imagine the “guerres de voisin” if there were similar signs in France… wouldn’t be pretty! 😆

      Reply
  4. Laurel April 14, 2011 at 11:43 am

    Very interesting post. As a Canadian I’m used to this, although living in Germany I’m not as in tune with all the election stuff as I should be. But I can see how it would seem weird for other cultures. I personally don’t tell anyone who I’m voting for and you won’t see any sign on my lawn, but you’re right there are a lot of them.

    Reply
    1. Zhu April 14, 2011 at 11:58 am

      It was very strange for me when I first came to Canada. I’m not sure how things are done in Germany but in France, campaign material is pretty regulated and signs like the ones found in Canada would be totally out of place!

      Reply
  5. Shawn April 15, 2011 at 2:42 am

    You can go to http://www.elections.ca, type in your postal code to get your riding, then click on candidates at the top to see who’s running. I just noticed that there is both a communist party as well as a Marxist-Leninist party. I didn’t know either existed and am very curious what the difference is. There used to be a Rhinoceros Party in Canada who believed in creating a $3 bill. I heard that in many European countries, they use proportional representation, meaning that, if a party gets 3% of the national vote, then they get 3% of the seats in parliament. But, in Canada, because of the ridings system, the smaller parties have little chance of getting any seats, be they Libertarian or Green. So many Canadians, even if they support a smaller party, won’t vote for them because their vote won’t count for anything.

    I like what you said about the contradiction between secret ballot and signage. The former is more democratic to me.

    Reply
    1. Zhu April 15, 2011 at 10:59 am

      Thank you very much on the tip, I’ll use that in the future! Right after the elections were announced I tried to find out who was running in my riding and couldn’t find it. I’ll definitely head to Elections Canada in the future.

      France does use proportional representation and we have a lot of minority parties (such as the hunters’ party, no kidding!) sitting at the Parliament.

      Reply
  6. Jeruen April 16, 2011 at 1:20 pm

    Oh if you compare Canadian elections with Filipino ones, you’ll remark that Canadian ones are quite demure and subdued, compared to Filipino ones! In Filipino elections, not only are lawns covered by the candidates posters, but every surface that is public, from walls to gates to everywhere, you’ll see the pictures and names of the candidates. It creates a huge mess as you can imagine.

    Reply
    1. Zhu April 16, 2011 at 9:33 pm

      Ah, so Filipinos like politics as well? Sounds like France the way you describe it, except campaign material is regulated and it’s not as messy. Do people easily disclose where they are voting for?

      Reply
      1. Jeruen April 19, 2011 at 5:17 pm

        I think yes, they don’t mind disclosing who they are voting for. The thing is, unfortunately, politics in the Philippines is heavily swayed by religious influences: the Catholic Church and other big churches actually act as unofficial parties, so when their bishops recommend a candidate, the whole church pretty much votes that way. It’s kinda sad, actually, that it’s clear evidence that most people would just like to let others think for them instead of doing the thinking themselves. So yes, since people don’t mind this idea, they easily let other people know that they’re voting for Candidate X since my pastor told me so.

        Reply
        1. Zhu April 20, 2011 at 11:14 am

          So I guess votes are largely predictable based on one’s faith. Thank you for your insights, it’s always interesting to hear you talk about your birth country!

          Reply
  7. Em May 11, 2011 at 6:27 pm

    I rea the 1st sentence and thought “Come on Zhu, look at the grass on the picture, are you crazy or what?!”. However, that was a month ago and I guess things have changed now.
    It’s weird reading this post now; it’s as if I had read the end of a novel before starting properly…
    I haven’t been able to help thinking about The Best Laid Plans during this election business. In Fallis’s novel, the “fake” candidate actually does not put signs up and it’s a big deal.
    Here as well we get signs, but it’s on roundabouts most of the time and at the traffic lights…

    Reply
  8. Pingback: Canadians are Weird with Campaign Signs

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